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Saturday, November 27, 2010

I discovered it first, crawling back into bed at 2 in the afternoon and booting up my laptop.

The internet had disappeared.

Since I had seen some workmen down the street clearing branches blown down by the wind I simply assumed it was a temporary loss. I did not worry.

By the time Emily had gotten home at 3:30, I had done everything I knew how to do. I restarted the modems. I turned the entire system off and on again, waiting for the light indicating that my connection had been reestablished.

Terrance then arrived home, and proceeded to repeat the exact same steps I had just taken. You know, because I might have failed to correctly turn off the machines. Or maybe his extra testosterone would scare the modem into finding the internet signal faster.

When that failed, he called the internet people. Who explained that when we decided to change telephone providers, they accidentally just shut off everything, Whoops! Oh, and even though they were able to shut it off in one fell swoop from a building downtown, there was no possible way for them to turn it back on the way they turned it off.

So maybe they could turn in back on by Saturday. Morning. Saturday Morning. Yeah, Saturday Morning, they could turn it back on.

Emily immediately fell apart. Wailing, crying and flopping about. Her SHOWS!!! What was she going to DOOOOOOO?"

She gets sent to her room, so her parents can pointedly try not to glare at each other.

It is clear that this situation could quickly devolve. Two adults who do a majority of their work via the web, not to mention 90% of their socializing and entertainment are now faced with NO internet. And a long holiday weekend. Oh, this could get bad. Like old west, Donner Party Bad.

By Friday, I had gone shopping A LOT. I had also read several books. Straight through. May I suggest Patrick Ness' series Chaos Walking? I read The Knife of Never Letting go and The Ask and the Answer each in a day. I finished two rugs. I discovered a deli who specializes in real Eastern European food! I made Stuffing! From Scratch!

If we could just all hang on until Saturday, our life would return to blessed normalcy.

When I woke, I could hear Terrance in the other room. I couldn't exactly make out what he was saying.

I opened the door and was faced by a stricken looking Emily.

"It could be a Week! It could be a MONTH!", she whisperers urgently.

Oh. Oh No. This is really not good.

Which is how we left the house, leaving Terrance behind in some enraged cleaning frenzy. Shouting at us that we weren't cleaning up to his standards and that I was lazy.